Monthly Archives: September 2012

Going to the Linkin Park concert felt like closure. The band is like an old boyfriend who I regret leaving. He has changed, not for the worse, not for the better, but in a way that I am capable of understanding but don’t really want to understand, so I’ve been holding on, hoping that maybe some day I’ll turn around, that some day I’ll see, or that maybe one day everything will all be explained to me, like in some cheesy movie.

I don’t feel changed after the concert, not changed in the way that is dramatic and life-altering. The concert was one last connection. If anything, everything remained the same after the concert, that LP had changed and that I had changed; we’d both grown in different directions, but after the concert it just felt more okay than before.

Hearing them play live, seeing them in person right in front of me was like a metaphor for change. They are still the same band, with the same members, playing the same instruments, and despite all their new songs, the old ones are still with them, marking the path that they had taken, the path that I followed them down for a certain time, and no matter how many new albums they release, those songs will still be there, and Chester will still rip the stadium apart with his heart-stopping screams.

If you think about it in terms of a person, how much can someone really change? I don’t listen much to rock now, I’m investing my time in completely different genres, but when it comes down to it, I still love those old songs. There is a park of me that is still the same person that I had been before, the part that played a Linkin Park album on repeat for hours on end, first listening to the song, then to each individual instrument, breaking the song down, and that won’t ever change, no matter how many new tastes I acquire.

And as a final memento, I picked up a souvenir at the concert that was quite unexpected, like a small, personal, parting gift.

Overall I think I handled that break-up pretty well, don’t you? 😉

In all seriousness I still fully support Linkin Park, just not in the way that I used to. And I still can’t believed they opened with Faint.